The Trump administration plans to extend current restrictions on foreign aid for abortion; efforts promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and so-called “gender ideology,” according to a senior official who shared the information ahead of the anti-abortion March for Life in Washington on Friday.

New rules will expand the “Mexico City Policy,” adopted by the U.S. in 1984 under President Ronald Reagan, to add “woke” ideologies — including DEI and support for transgender rights — to a list of international programs that the U.S. will no longer fund.

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“The State Department will release three final rules on Friday expanding the Mexico City Policy to protect foreign assistance from subsidizing not only abortion as a method of family planning, but also gender ideology (and) discriminatory equity ideology/DEI,” said the official, who confirmed the plans on condition of anonymity. Fox News first reported the policy change.

Under previous iterations of the Mexico City Policy — with a history of being reversed by Democratic administrations and revived under Republicans — U.S. funding was barred from supporting organizations that advocate for abortion rights. In Trump’s first term, the policy was expanded to cover roughly $8 billion in global health assistance. 

The new rules will go further, covering over $30 billion in non-military foreign assistance.

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Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other international organizations receiving U.S. assistance will have to certify that they don’t provide or promote abortion as “a method of family planning,” promote “gender ideology,” promote “discriminatory equity ideology,” or engage in “unlawful” diversity, equity and inclusion, according to the source, who spoke on the condition anonymity prior to an official announcement of the revised policy.   

The State Department in November announced plans to classify actions under pro-diversity policies and state subsidies for abortion as human rights abuses in its reports, Reuters reported.

The new rules are scheduled for release by the State Department on Friday, and coincide with completion of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization.

Taken together with the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. withdrawal from dozens of global organizations, the new foreign aid policy represents a major setback in progress for LGBTQ+ rights, gender equity, and the worldwide fight against the HIV epidemic.

“This is so incredibly cruel,” Keifer Buckingham, managing director for LGBTQ+ rights group Council for Global Equality, said of the expanded Mexico City Policy. “It really is about forcing governments or NGOs or international organizations to sign on to an extreme ideological agenda, even denying that transgender or nonbinary people EXIST, just to get U.S. funds to provide what is often lifesaving services or programs,” he told The New York Times.

Soon after its implementation in 1984, opponents dubbed the Mexico City Policy the “global gag rule” for barring funding to organizations, even if they’re not using American tax dollars to engage in the proscribed activities.

That fact was lost on at least one supporter of Trump’s illiberal agenda.

“Far from being any kind of gag rule, you are free to talk however you wish if you’re paying for it, but you can’t ask us to pay for your speech,” said Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for the group Students for Life of America, a participant in Friday’s March for Life. She added, “We don’t want to invest in abortion.”

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